FHIR Subscriptions

SanteDB supports subscribing to resource events via the creation of Subscription resource instances.

Currently the SanteDB iCDR PubSub layer does not use persistence queues for retry/resubmit. This feature is currently under construction, as of version 2.1.x PubSub requests are realtime push notifications and the use of an external reliable delivery method is recommended.

Creating Subscriptions

The underlying implementation of the FHIR Subscription mechanism is the SanteDB PubSub broker, when a Subscription resource is created the SanteDB iCDR service interacts with the PubSub broker to:

• Create a new channel definition with the appropriate endpoint and authentication information,

• Creates a new subscription definition with the appropriate filter criteria,

• Activates the subscription if active is set to true.

For example, consider this subscription request

{
  "resourceType": "Subscription",
  "id": "my_subscription",
  "status": "active",
  "contact": [
    {
      "system": "phone",
      "value": "180086626362"
    }
  ],
  "end": "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "reason": "Monitor Creation of Female Patients",
  "criteria": "Patient?gender=female",
  "channel": {
    "type": "rest-hook",
    "endpoint": "http://localhost:8989/fhir/Patient",
    "payload": "application/fhir+json",
    "header": [
      "Authorization: Bearer secret-token-abc-123"
    ]
  }
}

This subscription definition would:

• Create a new channel definition pointing at http://localhost:8989

  • Content/Type would be added (application/fhir+json) to the channel definition

  • Authorization header (bearer secret-token-abc-123) added to the channel definition

  • The channel dispatcher would be mapped from rest-hook to the FhirRestHookDispatcher

• Create a new subscription definition :

  • FHIR resource type Patient would be mapped to target SanteDB.Core.Model.Roles.Patient

  • Filter criteria gender=female would be mapped to HDSI filter genderConcept.referenceTerm.mnemonic=female

  • Subscription would be activated

  • Subscription would have a notAfter time set of 2025-01-01

Supported Dispatchers

The SanteDB iCDR supports the following dispatchers on the channel:

Type	Channel Scheme	Dispatcher
rest-hook	fhir-rest-http://	FhirPubSubRestHookDispatcher
message	fhir-msg-http://	FhirPubSubMessageDispatcher
sms	sms://	Default handler for SMS messages
email	mailto://	Default handler for e-mail messages
llp (extended)	llp://	Notify using HL7v2 LL (extended option)